Possible Overwatch Ana nerfs

By: Darrell Keller

Every season in overwatch there has been a go-to hero that has a slight edge over the rest of the characters in the game. Last season, that character was D.va. When D.va was first introduced to the game she was a bit weak and got a few buffs here and there until they completely reworked her and her defence matrix. After that buff, she was incredibly hard to kill. It would sometimes take three players to take out one D.va player, and this was for a number of reasons. She had too much armor and had a great ability, the defence matrix, to block damage. The have since removed much of her armor, and now she is rarely even played because she is a tad bit fragile for a tank character.

I bring up D.va and her nerfs because I feel like the blizzard team is doing a similar thing with Ana.

My favorite grandma sniper

The problem with Ana, was that she did too much damage as a support character, she could heal herself, and stun enemies. This is a kind of kit all the other support heroes simply didn’t have. Blizzard is only now realizing this, and they wanted to nerf the cookies out of this elderly sniper lady. The initial nerf took 50% of the healing AND damage from her biotic grenade drastically affecting her overall utility. They went even further with this nerf and dropped her damage from 80 damage per bullet to 60. Recently, the team decided the nerf was a bit heavy handed and removed the nerf on the grenade, but kept the nerf on the bullet damage.

I myself am not much of an Ana player. I prefer to be in the heart of the battle instead of on the sidelines, but I’ve also never had that much trouble from Ana. In most matches, it’s customary to kill the healer first, and it’s a habit I gladly partake in. That being said, I still have been killed by Ana more than any other healer in the game, including Zenyatta, who is basically meant to do damage. I think reducing the bullet damage would definitely prevent her from being the cutthroat healer she is, and help other people deal with her easier.